In my piece from a year ago, The Rosy Scent Trail of Ms. Pusey, I extolled the virtues and mental clarity of not having a mobile phone. That hiatus has lasted from June 2015 until now, almost a year and a half, and I have loved it. The peace of it. All the books I have read. The non-addictiveness; the sense of being detached.
But for one reason and another, I have had to capitulate. It was essentially kind of forced on me.Being uncontactable is essentially selfish, I suppose, and no longer tenable (and in the majority of people’s eyes, seriously weird. We don’t have a working house phone either……………..)
So, anyway, I am now the ‘proud’ (and already addicted, and more insomniac, seriously, even after just five days) owner of an iPhone 7. I feel more twitchy, and compulsive, and itching to always check. The ergonomic intimate pleasure, and the smoothness.The plugged-inness. The gleaming, irresistible lure of the brainwashed consumerist Matrix.
And it has definitely disturbed my inner composure (not that there was much of that going on this crazy, mangled fascist of a year in any case), but at the same time, I can’t deny for a moment that I am enjoying, now that the cold has set in and the end of term and its inevitable alienations and exhaustions begun, the immediate contact with my Loved One. The instant messages that flash up on the screen; the cozy feeling of having him tucked away hidden in my pocket.
And I feel visually really excited, and turned on: that side of me, I realize now, was muted and turned out, me always grabbing Duncan’s phone when I wanted to take something: but now I can just take my own. Random pictures. Just for the hell of it. Just to mutate the boring day into something more curious.
So here are some snaps from my environs taken over the last few days. In the miserable sleety snow of yesterday, when things happened that put me in one of the foulest possible moods of my entire life. The lurches of today. And the marvellous banality of the everyday, and how you can twist it, and edit it, as your eye, and your brain, see fit.
